"Guns" by Victoria Jackson

Victoria Jackson is a comedian and actress who used to appear on Saturday Night Live. Her specialty was playing "the ditzy blonde". In this essay, she begins:

I have a gun. It has never shot anyone. Not even people I’m mad at. It just lies there, like it’s sleeping.

I bought it in 1986 when Richard Ramirez was on a killing spree in Los Angeles and I had a new baby. You know, the guy who used his victim’s blood to paint pentagrams on their walls? They said he liked yellow houses. I lived in a yellow house in Laurel Canyon. It was hidden in the trees far away from other houses so no one would even hear us scream.

So, I bought a gun to protect my daughter.

Click on the picture to read the whole thing. She continues:

My husband Paul shot and killed a man. Paul is a cop. Actually, it happened to be the night he was flying from Miami to NY to see me at Saturday Night Live for his first time. We were dating long distance. Maybe he was anxious to see me or something. He had to stay up all night filling out paperwork and getting counseling, because I guess that’s what happens when you shoot someone. He finally got to SNL and I was on the stage getting out of an alien space ship with eyeballs on my nipples because we were doing a sketch about a planet where women’s eyes have mutated to their nipples because men stared at women’s chests for so long. Kirstie Alley was our leader. I said, “Paul this must be so surreal for you…to kill someone… and stay up all night…and see me in a spaceship.”

Paul said, “It is.”

When I introduced him to the cast, Mike Meyers said, “Hey, you got any war stories? Ha, ha!”

Paul said, “I killed a man last night.” Silence.

I realized our worlds were completely opposite. But we do have some things in common.

1) We both like donuts

2) We both could die, him for real and me onstage, and they’re equally painful, and

3) We both get rewarded for a big bust!

Funny stuff!

h/t Frank W. James.